On his departure from office, America’s first President, George Washington, delivered his famous Farewell Address in which, among other things, he warned against reliance on just the sort of partisan politics system that now dominates America’s political life, and that has deeply corrupted America’s political culture:

English: Alan Keyes at a campaign rally. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let me now…warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party…It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy….[T]he common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it….[I]n governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose.

And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.

Washington predicted that, where party spirit reigns unchecked, it spawns disorders and miseries and “leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.” During the history of the United States, the accuracy of Washington’s foresight has often been verified by developments at the state and local level, like the urban party despotisms in cities like Chicago, or the more flamboyantly individual variety that emerged in a state like Louisiana. Never before, however, has the nation as a whole been as clearly threatened as it is at present with “a more formal and permanent despotism.” Many now perceive the outward appearances of that despotism in the Obama faction’s forceful push toward socialism, from the government takeover of healthcare, to the economically senseless eco-tyranny that is stifling production and distorting cost in the energy sector, at the price of new business opportunities and countless badly needed jobs.

More disturbing than the Obama faction’s ham-handed and obvious socialist coup attempt is the more discretely veiled bipartisan transgression of the U.S. Constitution’s constraints on the consolidation and use of government power. As excuses, the leaders of the elite faction’s Parties cite national security or the urgent need to deal with budget shortfalls. But since both challenges result from what appears to be intractable incompetence in the leadership of both the Democrat and Republican parties, the gnawing suspicion is inevitable that these urgent problems result from something more insidious. The suspicion has more bite to it once we realize that the GOP is exploiting the reaction against Obama to advance Mitt Romney to the Presidency. His record suggests that, though he moves toward the objective with a more deceptively alluring style than Obama, Romney will herd Americans more surely and quietly into the stock pens of totalitarian socialism………